Filling Up a Hole

A woman's growth from housewife to a leader in the Women's Rights Movement of the 1960s is one of the principal issues in this book. Addressing who you feel you are, living your life in ways that fulfill your true identity, and, even if it means, sacrificing something in the process.The novel is about the 'hole' everyone has which if filled would make us the person we aspire to be. Each character is dealing with his or her 'hole' with both success and failure. Boyce Phillips is a father/husband and is a waste-of-space individual. Two principal characters, Clarence Dawson, a successful black author writing under a white man's name is hiding from the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and Dodie Phillips, while trying to deal with a collapsing family is introduced to the Women's Rights movement in which she becomes fulfilled. The oldest son, Paul, only communicates via his piano music and is trying to get enough money together so he can run away from his family by prostituting himself to a group of middle-aged loser women. Tommy, the younger 'good' son is the only one trying to hold the family together.